Yes, as I said it was ours. I'm sure we'd waive the fee for others too. Have to think $3 (for a legacy FW400 and 2 FW800) would be something a smart consumer would accept as a passed on cost. eSATA would work too. We don't use USB unless there's no choice. Data transfer via Ethernet cable is not fun.

A matter of cost. Apple does not make high-volume low-margin hardware. Ive’s design sensibility and obsession with thin gadgets makes it easy for Apple to market this as sleek design, but it really comes down to keeping the device margins high and then selling consumers high-margin accessories to make up for the missing parts. That’s why Apple won’t make a netbook—a low-margin device that doesn’t sell USB hubs isn’t going to make a big profit.

1GB of RAM and the inability to multitask seems stupid to me. In an ideal iTab world, I could go on a photoshoot, import all my pictures on the iTab, editin Lightroom on the train ride home while listening to music and/or talking with client/model/friend via Skype and start importing completed photos on to my server/flickr account on the walk home. I'd also love to see some network links with the tab for artist collaborative projects. Either in an office or all over the world while talking to the people on Skype or some magical apple equivalent. I'mnot sure if it would do that latter though...

Anyways, that's just me. If they wanted this to be revolutionary, they should have increased the RAM and made it possible to do the stuff we're already capable of in these techno multitasking monkey times.

The OS is essentially no different from iPhone OS. I jailbroke mine right when blackra1n came out. That said, I bought a refurb one in September, and I'm happy with it, but it's immensely disappointing to buy a product that's less than a year old, then find out that gens 2&3 are basically the same and gen 4 will be a huge step up and will be out in less than a year. Actually, based on the specs, the 8GB models of gens 1, 2, and 3, especially the latter two, are practically the same product in a different box.

Although it's easy to compare this thing to a netbook/PC, I'm just not feeling this thing to be like a traditional computer/netbook and all the things that typically does. The smallest Powerbook costs as much as the high-end iPad, so it's not really a logical step for Apple to promote this as such a machine. Where this thing will shine or fail will be the apps that are created for it, which is probably half the success of the iPhone honestly. Apple did the hardware work; A touchscreen interface, a good battery life, is REALLY light for it's size and relatively unobtrusive. It surely is an experiment and it's going to be fun to see what it does, especially things that Apple probably itself didn't see coming...